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Pericope Study
Center for Theology, LRC
The Transfiguration of our Lord
February 22, 2004
II Corinthians 3:12--4:2
1 Paul has been contrasting the ministry of the Spirit to the ministry of death," chiseled in letters on stone tablets," which "came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses' face." (vs 7) The "ministry of justification" abounds in glory (vs 10). Thus does he preface the hope in which he acts "in great boldness."
2 Paul contrasts the hardened minds of those who were obliged to gaze on Moses' veiled face with the freedom and transformation of those who with unveiled faces look upon the glory of the risen Lord. Those who so look see "the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror" and are being "transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another."
3 Is this a partisan Paul, one who consigns to Moses only a veil, "to this very day"? Such contrasts between the old covenant and the new leave Paul open to the mindless zealotry of Marcion. Justin Martyr viewed the old covenant with rather more respect, regarding it as God's pedagogue prior to the coming of the Christ.
But Paul's purpose is less to diminish the old covenant than to lift up the freedom of the new. Paul's christocentric vision understands all things as veiled, apart from Christ--echoing St. John's recalling of Jesus' own perspective: "if you continue in my word you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." It is only in Christ that the veil is set aside. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
4 Paul understands this freedom in the Spirit as part of God's mercy, on account of which he does not lose heart. Renouncing shameful things, he refuses to practice cunning or to "falsify God's word," but "by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God." The freedom in the Spirit flourishes in the absence of the veil.
5 In our time, freedom is abused as the vehicle for practicing cunning to falsify God's word. The Bishop of Rome has written brilliantly concerning the disjunction of freedom from the truth in Christ. Only in the truth of Christ can one safely proceed in freedom. Only in genuine theonomy can one understand himself as free. Freedom invoked to justify positions plainly opposed to the scripture is a new and pernicious veil, draped seductively over the face of Christ. Already in Paul's time was gnosticism as much a threat as legalism. In our time both have returned with a vengeance, the legalist shriveling and distorting the faith, the gnostic causing it to vanish in the vapors of sophistication and self-conceit. The Gospel is, in various hands, captive to the rabid right, to the gnostic left, and to the vacuous middle.
6 The various self-styled "armies of God," however right in their opposition to the abortion atrocity and the homosexualist agenda, are enemies of the faith and enemies of Christ. No one speaking by the Holy Spirit says "Jesus be damned," and no one who loves Jesus will bomb clinics in opposition to the atrocities within, just as no one who loves Jesus will bomb nightclubs on account of their catering to those whose aim it is to alter disgracefully what is family and what is marriage. The old-line legalists, whose distortion of the Gospel remains a factor in the American landscape, nurtured their indignity over licentiousness rather more quietly, in enclaves of proper protestantism, whether Baptist or Lutheran, Methodist or Presbyterian. Some of them are still there. But their shriveled "other gospel" pales before the secluded "armies."
7 Of the gnostic left I have already written much. They are more likely to practice cunning than rage, cleverly falsifying God's word rather than taking out their opponents with explosives. Their first move of falsification is to invoke the status of victim. In this the rabid right simply plays into their hands. It is easy to paint victims in the ashes of clinics; bombs make more noise than saline solutions. To the ears of God the suction devices of partial-birth abortions are as loud and hellish as nail-shrapnel bombs. But to the media, whose inclination is to embrace and glorify a distorted freedom, the bombs are the attraction. The victims are easy to find, and easy to claim.
8 The vacuous middle? They occupy the pews in congregations. Limping along on cheap grace or social status, or both, they do not understand discipleship, much less its cost. Not a few of them are "consumers," sampling the smorgasbord of religion to relieve the ache of a life not well lived. Or they are still of the view that "church" is part of what it means to be a well-adjusted family. There are pastors in this cadre, their passion diminished or demised, made more uncomfortable by the prospect of shrunken rolls than by shrunken souls, more attuned to the stock market and pension possibilities than to the content of the faith in an age of stunning temptations and formidable foes.
9 Paul understands that, compared to the veil that shrouded the old covenant, we now walk in the light. The three disciples on the mountain of Transfiguration saw it first hand, however couched in vision. As children of the light, by baptism, we walk in the light, in a freedom defined by the Spirit of the Lord, rather than by the spirit of the age. "(We) refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God's word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God." So says Paul. It is not, though, by the" conscience of everyone," that we shall be measured; it is, rather, by faithfulness to the Gospel.
JLY - 02.16.04
Luke 9:28-43
1. The event of the Transfiguration of our Lord (parallels in Matthew 17:1-8 and Mark 9:2-9) is the epiphany that conveys--to Peter, James, and John--the divine authentication of Peter's confession to Jesus, six days earlier on the road to Caesarea Philippi, that "You are the Messiah." Whatever confusion might have remained among the trio about "who Jesus is" took on radical clarity in the presence of the austere giants of their heritage. The text does not suggest how it was that the disciples were given to know the identities. It only reports that "while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem." Perhaps the words of the conversation disclosed them as Moses and Elijah. Perhaps it was that Jesus confided who they were. Perhaps God, the Author of the moment, simply revealed it to them. No matter. They knew.
2. Peter's nervous suggestion--"not knowing what he said"--intrudes into the privileged conversation a proposal that is at once both awesome respect and comic relief: that they mark the occasion with three booths, "one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." God heightens the tension as a "cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, 'This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!'"
Can you imagine their awe, their terror? With Jesus they were familiar, if yet a bit uncomfortable in the presence of someone of whom they had been obliged to declare, "even the wind and the seas obey him." (8:25) With Jesus they had ventured a response, as above, from Peter, that "you are the messiah." (9:20) This was an affirmation of respect and great hope, that the Anointed One of God had come and was present in the person of their itinerant rabbi, but not, surely, a notion that the messiah was anything more than a man whom God had chosen. A man with unusual powers and teaching, with habits a bit disconcerting, as in eating with "sinners."
But here was a setting of a different order: the presence of personages whose stature was without parallel in the annals of their history, two of the five most prominent men in their story (absent Abraham, Israel, and David) and the symbols of the two anchors of their faith--the Law and the Prophets.
And now, the voice of God, from the overshadowing cloud. God's cloud and voice solved the problem of what the disciples should "do." They kept silent. In that moment and afterward, about the event. Silence appropriate in the presence of God. Luke says it well: "And they kept silence and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen."
The cloud lifted. They were again alone with Jesus. No words recorded until they were on their way down the mountain. In Mark, the silence is broken by Jesus' instruction that they should "tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead." (9:9) In Matthew, Jesus is more specific, not so much as to instruction as to what they had experienced: "As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, 'Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.'" (9:36b)
3. What Jesus calls a vision is susceptible to designation as "myth." This is not a vulnerability of recent vintage, say in Reimarus or Hume, or Bultmann, or the Jesus Seminar. St. Peter is aware of it, on later reflection. He asserts (II Peter 1:16-18) "For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.' We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain." - The key in the assertion is having been among the "eyewitnesses of his majesty" rather than being obliged to "follow cleverly devised myths." The author of the epistle asserts eyewitness credibility to precisely the event of the Transfiguration. Already in the first century--or early in the second--the author knows several things:
a) That the event of the Transfiguration has about it the appearance of myth, bringing together as it does both the law and the prophets and the fulfillment of both: Moses, Elijah, and Jesus;
b) The force of eyewitness testimony to counter the suspicion of myth; and
c) That the content of the emerging faith is radically historical, surrounded as it was by myriads of mythic accounts of dying and rising saviors, gods and goddesses, epic stories.
One can argue (has have the Form Critics and fellow travelers, both in their insights and in their reductionisms) that the worldview of these people, of this apostolic writer, was itself mythological--pre-Einsteinian, pre-Newtonian, and even by nearly 1500 years pre-Copernican. But one cannot assert that the author was innocent of the notion of myth, blithely wandering about in wonder in a world enchanted with demons and angels, unaware of the difference between myth and fact, or myth and occurrence. Peter himself is self-conscious about the notion of myth. Further, he is clear to distinguish his account from the mythic. He even recognizes differences among myths, some being cleverly devised and others, no doubt, more primitive and clumsy. We were there, he testifies, on the mountain. We saw the vision.
This, he declares, is no myth. We were there, eyewitnesses: "we ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain." Is the assertion made the less credible if the author is not Peter himself but a disciple of Peter? Or simply someone of the second generation (or at the beginning of the third) who writes from the point of view of Peter but who himself did not hear from the Apostle's mouth that "I was there, an eyewitness," but who heard it from one who did? In a court of law, perhaps.
But the apostolic witness was ever characterized by unanimity over the events. No dissenter rose in their ranks, even under threat or pain of death or persecution. No apostle became defector and wrote to disparage. The variations in the accounts owe less to faulty memory or deception than to the redactory skills of the Evangelists. At the very least, the author of the epistle is both careful and bold to assert that this is no myth. He knows the difference between what is mythic and what had eyewitnesses. This had eyewitnesses. This we saw.
What did they see? They saw an epiphany that suggested a lot more than the power of this man to heal diseases. Or to turn water into wine. More, even, than authority over wind and wave. The saw, and understood that they saw, Moses and Elijah, the men who signified the Law and the Prophet\s as God's covenant and God's word to their ancestors. The saw and recognized, in the vision, two men long dead--a sign to which they were able later to link Jesus' reference to resurrection. A sign of God's intention for His beloved. A sign that God is stronger even than death.
In two of the accounts (Matthew and Mark), Jesus overtly links the incident to the resurrection: tell no one about this until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. Tell no one about having seen Moses and Elijah--the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets in the Messiah--until God announces new-covenant resurrection by means of THE Resurrection.
More still: what did they hear? They heard the voice of God from the cloud, saying precisely who this was that they had followed, however curiously, however tentatively thus far. "This is my beloved Son; listen to Him."
The vision was theirs. They heard the voice. The message comes directly to us: "This is my beloved Son; listen to him." The resurrection did indeed occur, as St. Paul insisted so beautifully last Sunday. They can talk about it now. So can we.
JLY - 02.22.04
EXODUS 34:29-35
29/Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. 30/When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. 31/But Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them. 32/Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 33/When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; 34/but whenever Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he would take the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the Israelite what he had been commanded, 35/the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him.
There are connections with the Gospel for this Sunday in some of the details of the account. It takes place on a mountain, in the presence of God. There is a shining light. In the Gospel those who witness the event are frightened by what they see and hear and in this reading the people are frightened by the shining face of Moses, a consequence of his conversation with Yahweh. In both instances there are people who learn that you do not come away from a meeting with God unaffected by it.
The tablets with the ten words or commands are characterized not as words of law but as words of covenant (b,rith). This relationship with God does not begin with the action of people, their obedience, but with the action of God, his promise and calling. Without that enabling action of God any attempts at obedience are futile. Even with the prior activity of God human beings are unable to present to God a reaction of perfect obedience. There can be growth in godliness, but it remains a fearful thing to witness the power and holiness of God. (Simul justus et peccator) Moses would continue to cover his face when he emerged from his conversations with God, but he would also come to the people with further understanding of what it means to be the people of God and the confidence that they were ready to hear these even if they were not ready to obey them perfectly. Only God's gracious forgiveness can produce hope in sinners.
We will always be tempted to find the goal of religion in adjusting the commands of God to fit our capabilities. It is the greatest temptation to Christian faith and will always confront us. In trying to do this we forget that the answer to our inability is God's ability and love.
This is made more clear in the gospel for this day (Luke 9). Peter's recognition that Jesus is the Messiah is followed by Jesus' declaration that this means suffering, death and resurrection for him. The One who is anointed and chosen and Son of God will suffer the consequences of sinners' rebellion and make forgiveness and hope possible.
The people of the old covenant may not have used the picture of God dying for the sins of people, but they did have experiences of his presence which enabled them to realize that their hope lay in God's forgiveness and not in their fulfilling his expectations of them. The story of God's people does not tell of their faithfulness but of God's faithfulness to his promises. Even the awful story of Lent will be filled with hope because of this.
WEM
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